Ross Douthat on Abortion and Marriage

Ross Douthat has published another op-ed on abortion (and marriage) in the NY Times today: Faking Left:

Among their many aspirations for his presidency, Barack Obama’s admirers nursea persistenthope that he might be able to end the culture wars. And by end, they generally mean win. The real hope is a final victory for cultural liberalism, and social conservatism’s permanent eclipse.

These hopes are overstated, but not necessarily irrational. Four months in, the Obama administration does seem to have a plausible strategy for turning the”social issues”to liberalism’s advantage. The outline is simple: Engage on abortion, and punt on gay rights.

Douthat claims, mysteriously, that the Obama Adminstration must engage on abortion because “[t]he pro-life movement is arguably more comfortable with the language of rights and liberties than its opponents.” Huh? I was reluctant to post the op-ed without responding, but luckily Wonkette was on the same wave-length (and no doubt much funnier about it than I would have been):

It is not his debut : maybe second, or third, or fourth : but it’s the first one we’ve read so deal with it okay? It’s not bad! And because he is, again, a”youth,”he throws in many Internet hyperlinks to his sources. Clicky clicky hooray! So this post will be, unfortunately, a Civilized response to one of his points : that the grain of history favors the pro-life movement : which is less fun than just spitting blood at the computer screen, as we did for Bill Kristol….